The time had finally come for me to meet and then slay the divine echoes of the minor god known as Technos, the once powerful guardian of the first layer of the hellish dimension known as Infernius. A second ago I had found myself in my penthouse, the fancy apartment I had taken for my own whenever I was in Infernius, and now I found myself elsewhere.

I was standing at the top of an enormous hill overlooking a vast crater of some sort. In the middle of the crater was a positively enormous, highly modern looking building that appeared to be some sort of factory unlike any I had ever seen.

I had never been to this part of Infernius' surface before, something which a quick check of my mental map confirmed. I silently shook my head, gathered my wits, and began to trek down the hill, towards the building where I knew I was going to have a climatic showdown.

As I began my trek I opted to walk rather than teleport to my destination so that I could have a moment for myself, and because I suspected that there were some nasty surprises waiting for me as I closed in on the facility. I was in no rush to have this battle, but it was one that I knew was necessary for me to begin to move towards my goal of becoming the lord of everything. There was also the fact that without encountering a vestige I couldn't gain greater power over truth and trickery, two of my favorite fonts of power.

In my three and a half years of life I had still only encountered a single vestige, that of Morehammer. Every step I took brought me closer and closer to encountering another one, and for once in my life I felt a bit nervous. That said I was no longer the child I had been before. The past three years had been good for me. I had slowed down and I had built things, I had learned things, and I felt ready to truly devote myself to the accumulation of greater personal power once again.

More importantly than the things I had built were the things I had learned. Now I was an actual god of knowledge, something I had proven again and again during the three years I had spent time building my empire. I had inspired sages, I had saved monks, and my empire built vast repositories of knowledge in every world that joined us, on every moon that was in our territory, and even inside of our spaceships. Knowledge that I had taken into myself.

That knowledge flowed inside of me, and I could recount any bit of it at will. History, science, philosophy, magic, alignments, I had a keen, encyclopedic understanding of all of that and more. And I suspected that my battle against Technos would give me ample opportunities to demonstrate that.

As I made my way down the vast hill I began to recall what I knew about my foe.

Technos was a minor god of technology and had been the first guardian of Infernius. He was slain in battle by Rok, the overgod of chaos. The surface of Infernius' current, deeply ashy and largely destroyed state can be traced directly back to Technos' death. That was what I had known before I took my time building my empire.

During the time I spent building my empire I did more research into the deceased guardian and I was able to uncover a bit more about him. Technos, like me, was a god of a number of things. He was a god of alteration, a school of magic which synergized well with technology, and had once been worshiped in the unspeakably distant past by the ancient ancestors of the civilization now known as Ascendance. Later on I planned to search the planet for artifacts created by the god, but for now I was content engaging him in battle.

It only took me a few minutes to reach the bottom of the hill. When I finally reached some flat ground I was unsurprised to see a reaction from the building off in the distance.

The first portion of the reaction was that the building off in the distance began to exude incredibly bright light. I chuckled and continued to watch the building, unbothered by the light that would have blinded weaker beings than myself. A split second later the walls of the building that faced me began to slide into the floor and revealed an impressive number of missile launchers.

"Missile launchers? A bit basic, but admittedly an effective deterrent." I muttered, even as I rose a hand in front of me and caused an impenetrable, rainbow-colored barrier to appear around me. WIth my barrier surrounding me I continued my journey into the final resting place of Technos. A few milliseconds after I erected my barrier and continued my trek towards the building the missile launchers deployed their payloads, which began to streak towards me.

As the missiles streaked towards me I willed my staff to appear in my left hand and when it answered my call I felt a bit safer and more confident in my ability to handle Technos. I didn't bother trying to obstruct the missiles, though I could have easily. I was confident in my abjurative powers, I had used them to erect arcane barriers around entire planets and fleets before, and they had taken blows from objects far more powerful than mundane missiles.

The first missile struck my barrier and exploded around me but the explosion didn't at all affect or disturb me or the barrier. I continued my journey, undistracted by the weaponry deployed against me. My barriers would resist anything the divine grave could throw at me.

As I moved closer and closer to the building more missiles struck my barrier. They were every bit as effective as the first missile, which was a polite way of saying that they didn't bother me in the slightest. When I had made it about a quarter of the way to the building in the distance it initiated another of the defensive mechanisms which existed to stop would-be intruders.

The ground in front of the building opened up and numerous gigantic, high-tech canons came out of the openings, carried on metal platforms solid enough to support the considerable weight of the canons. Off in the distance I could hear a countdown begin as the canons began to prepare their payloads. Missiles were still being fired at me, and were still harmlessly exploding around my barrier.

The canons that the grave deployed against me began to glow for a second, and during that second I chuckled and rose my right hand. I was silently casting an abjurative spell, a mundane one that moderately powerful abjurists could use. The spell caused the outside of my barrier to be surrounded by transparent shields, ones with a very powerful ability.

The instant the canons stopped glowing was the instant that they unleashed their destructive attack: powerful lasers that moved at the speed of light. The lasers sailed through the air at me, but they were stopped before they could reach me. The instant one reached my barrier one of the shields my spell had created appeared, took the blow, and then reflected the laser back at the canon that fired it.

The lasers didn't lose any of their power when they were reflected back at the canons that fired them. This was because of just how much magical energy I had injected into the spell when I had cast it. Having unlimited magical energy allowed me to overcharge all of my spells, with overcharging itself being an ability I had gained while reaching level 20 in the sorceror class.

One of the realest ways I had increased my personal power wasn't by becoming an archfey or by gaining the worship of a truly innumerable number of people. The key to a lot of my power was that I had spent time leveling up my classes while I was building my empire. That had given me countless abilities that further enhanced every aspect of my existence as a physical being, which in moments like this was going to be the key that determined the difference between success and failure.

The deflected lasers slammed into the canons that had fired them at me in the first place and destroyed them. This itself seemed to provoke a reaction from the building, in that an incredibly loud siren began to blare from the building, one that was loud enough that it actually annoyed me for a second before my ears adjusted to it. A few moments after the siren began to blare from the fancy gravesite an incredibly dense forcefield came into existence around the building, distorting the view of it as though it were in a desert and was a heat mirage. A few seconds later the forcefield changed colors and became a strange shade of blue that was almost transparent.

I kept approaching the building, undeterred by the appearance of the forcefield. I had destroyed barriers and forcefields before, while traveling on my own in the days before my empire became a thing that truly existed. Nothing about the forcefield made me think that it was any stronger than any other forcefield I had destroyed before.

The siren continued to blare as I drew ever closer to the building in the distance. As I closed the distance between myself and it I began to appreciate how immensely large it was. The building was easily the largest building I had ever seen, a true monster of a gravesite. It climbed high into the sky, and the fact that I hadn't seen before while outside of Duvessa was a sign of how large the surface of this dimension was.

The rest of my trek was only disturbed by the last few tricks the gravesite had to deter intruders, all of which were disappointing compared to the initial set of traps I had set off when beginning my trek. Holes would appear underneath me, which didn't bother me because I was capable of flight, and in some cases cannons flung lava at me which didn't affect me because of my barrier but even if it had hit me I would have been fine since I was both an elemental overlord and a god of fire.

As I approached the building the traps became less frequent, as though the building itself were indicating an approval of anyone with the ability to make it this far. At this point I was about three quarters of the way there and the traps persisted but were far more spaced out.

Eventually after a few minutes of walking I found myself in front of the enormous building. At this point there were no more traps, and all that loomed in front of me was a vast door. The door was clearly sized for a gigantic being, perhaps one dozens of meters tall. It was a large, scarlet door and as I approached it the forcefield from earlier began to intensify and solidify around the building.

"Forcefields are only so convenient." I muttered as the forcefield began to swell in response to my closing, looming presence. It began to let out an eerie hum, as if it were somehow increasing in power as I closed in on it. That said it wasn't an obstacle for me.

When I reached the door of the massive factory the forcefield began to change colors but before it could do anything to me I merely placed a hand on the door and activated a synergistic power that took from both the abjuration subdomain and the destruction domain. My power swiftly invaded the obstacle and I took a step back as the color of the forcefield began to change. This time instead of being a blue hue that tinted the building the color became black as my power corrupted and weakened the barrier.

I could have shattered the forcefield in a number of ways, but this way did the least damage to the building itself. If I had shattered the forcefield with force, which I definitely could have done thanks to the fact that I was infinitely powerful on a purely physical level, I ran the risk of overwhelming the forcefield and damaging the building.

If I overpowered the forcefield with a spell that ran the same risk. Even my "barrier buster" ability, which previously would have been how I handled stuff like this was a bit too powerful for comfort. The ability I utilized used the precise amount of force needed to deal with forcefields, making it perfect for this.

A few moments after I stepped away from the forcefield, cracks began to appear in the building's defenses. And then a split second later a loud sound like glass breaking resounded from the forcefield, as it exploded outward, like it was broken from the inside. I began to smile and I stepped forward again so that I could open the door and step through it, into the strange building at last.

The massive door was effortlessly opened when I placed a hand on it and utilized one of the physics domain powers I had acquired during the last of the pre-empire days: "Kinetic force manipulation". The door swung inward, revealing a massive entryway that was designed for things the size of older dragons. I sighed and stepped past the open door and into the building. As I did a notification filled my mind.

Pre-Programed Notification: Congratulations!

Welcome "Insert devil name here"! (Error: the person who entered the factory is not a member of the infernal hierarchy, information about them is not accessible to this limited iteration of the system) You have been selected for a momentous honor: to be perpetually united with the first of the guardians: the great gatekeeper, Technos.

Please proceed peacefully to the assimilation chamber and follow the instructions therein so that you may join your devilish siblings in eternal unification with the great gatekeeper and serve as one of the noble watchmen of Infernius.

I chuckled as I read through the notification and did away with it a few seconds after it appeared. Almost immediately after that the shocking sound of static resounded throughout the entryway, and a second later a new voice could be heard over what must have been a devilish P.A. system.

"Well, well, well... What do we have here? An intruder who easily disregarding my countless traps, and whose information isn't in the infernal hierarchy... Interesting. I was able to witness your tricks as you made your way towards my factory. I would ask what you are, but either my machines will subdue you and join you to me in eternal unification, whereupon I'll learn what you are, or you'll make your way towards me sooner or later and you'll be able to tell me face to face. Either way I'll be entertained." The confident sounding voice proclaimed, proudly.

That was the voice of Technos, the god of technology. And as I studied the enormous scale of the entryway around me, I keenly remembered one of the other things he was the god of: dragons. Off in the distance I heard the sounds of the infernal P.A. system this factory was equiped with flare to life again. For a second, things were quiet once the static sound from the P.A. system died down. And then the sound of Technos' confident voice shattered an all too short silence.

"Robotic minions... Rise. It is time for you to serve me once again. Capture the intruder! Subdue and mechanize him. Add him to our family!" The voice commanded, pride and eerie, infernal joy infusing it. I heard the sounds of machinery coming to life once more, and of electricity infusing dozens of thousands of robots all at once. And then the distant sound of robotic feet slamming onto a metal floor.

Robots were coming. Powerful ones that in some cases had once been organic devils and dragons. I stepped further into the factory that doubled as a sort of powerful gravesite for Technos with a grin on my face. The old me, or rather me when I was a child in every sense of the word, was not much of a combatant. That was no longer the case. I had trained long and hard during these last three years. I was now a confident, capable warrior, even for a god.

With every passing second the robots were closing in on me, and with each step I took I began to move closer and closer to my enemy. I was excited for the battles I would have in this place, and the grin on my face was one of a warrior with hundreds of victories under my belt, as well as a variety of powers that protected me from harm. It was time for battle.